The use of the Internet has become the de facto standard for information delivery, retrieval and research. Such use permeates through every aspect of modern life—whether it be in business, academics, or simply consumer activities. Static means for delivering information such as books, magazines, newspapers and even pre-recorded video (e.g., television) lacks the real-time, interactive nature that today's consumers have come to expect. Instead, real-time, interactive, digital content is considered customary and, in many cases, the necessary format in which to deliver information.
Moreover, many content providers, mobile carriers, social network platforms, and Internet portals from New York Times and Slate to Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, LinkedIn, MSN, and AOL recognize, and in fact rely on, the addition of third-party content into their pages to increase user engagement, which leads to increased advertising revenue. An entire industry has evolved that manages this process, including advertising networks, auction sites, social sharing add-ons and tracking platforms. The conventional approach used by the content providers, the advertisers and the advertising networks alike uses specific, pre-defined “slots” (often referred to as “real estate” or “inventory”) into which additional content can be added as the content is rendered. It is the job of the advertising network to determine which ad to insert into which slot based on any number of parameters. Similarly, social sites and other portals are constantly challenged with trying to determine which supplemental content to include on web pages and within mobile apps to maintain user engagement. Unfortunately, the ads and supplemental content is often of no interest to the user. As such the return on the advertising spend is far from optimal, and users have become accustomed to ignoring this additional content.
In addition, the pre-defined “slot” approach also has its drawbacks. Because of the nature and format of the content, these slots must be defined as static items—e.g., having a defined position relative to specific content and/or within the content and, usually, a defined size. The placement is not related to the contextual nature of the content, but simply the physical layout of the page, and in a very unsophisticated manner at that. For example, such systems and techniques cannot dynamically insert content that is “context-aware” (e.g., relates to the nearby content) and placed in a manner that considers the actual rendering schema of the page as not to disrupt the flow of the content or detract from the visual aesthetics of the page. While some systems allow for word or term-specific content insertion, these methods require that the content author predefine the words or phrases that are “active” and effectively tell the user which items they might be interested in learning more about. It is not a user-centric approach.
In order to be most effective, content insertion should be aware of the content into which it is being placed, the context of the content, the user's recent activities and queries, and the effect the inserted content will have on the visual nature of the page, i.e., the user experience.
As such, there is a need for techniques and supporting systems that recognize and understand the nature and structure of the content being viewed and can enhance the value of that content by adding additional, highly relevant information in a manner that adds to, as opposed to distracting from, the user's overall experience.